At Mount Olympus dive bar the “Grape and Grain”; on the Seattle, Washington, waterfront; while descending an Olympus, Inc., staircase. Anything could happen, anywhere, anytime, this week in “Beyond Big-G City”!
Week Fifteen:
October 10th through 16th, 2025
Friday, October 10, Olympus, Inc., headquarters. After reviewing the Department of Marriage’s highly favorable quarterly financial reports (thanks to the “Gift Bags for Lovers” joint venture with Aphrodite’s corporation, Love, Inc.), Hera slumps into a deep depression. Aphrodite’s transformation from enemy to collaborator is more than she can bear!
Though it’s well before noon, Hera retreats to nearby dive bar the Grape and Grain for a fortifying glass of Chardonnay. She deliberately selects a table where she can go unobserved. Nearby, a familiar voice slurs “Fancy meeting you here.” The disheveled woman in Aphrodite, mascara tears streaking her cheeks. She’s very, very drunk. When she curses Monique’s gift bag expansion plans, Hera realizes her eternal foe is suffering from the change in their relationship as much as she; also, that she actually gives a damn.
Meanwhile, in Seattle, Cleo Petra drinks in a perfect autumn day from the guest room window of Jim and Candy Smith’s penthouse apartment that overlooks Elliott Bay. It’s Tuesday, October 14. David Bernstein has been showing her around since they arrived on Friday- -the University of Washington campus where he earned his bachelor’s degree; futuristic tower the Space Needle where Clifford Essex did his old-style hands-on structureling work; the Seattle Center Food Court where David enthusiastically introduces her to mortal fast food.
Today they visit Seattle’s waterfront. They pass through a green park-like space on the way. David explains this is where the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Ralph’s structureling haunt, used to be. The new underground commuter tunnel lies beneath.
They lunch outdoors at the IVAR’S fish and chip stand. Cleo sees two extremely tall men walking by, one of them Clifford Essex. She waves them down and Clifford invites them to the Olympus, Inc., research vessel, Ms. Zeta. David is tapped to be deckhand, Cleo for computer assistance, while Poseidon (the other tall man) makes a dive to check the degrading seawall that protects the new commuter tunnel.
David and Cleo’s relationship has improved since they left Utah- -friends now, anyway. It seems eons since they last kissed, but David’s obsession with learning about his birth father is constantly on his mind, getting in the way of romance. He kicks himself for wasting time. Cleo, in a few short weeks, will be back at her Olympus, Inc., career-track job, working for the charismatic Hermes.
Speaking of Hermes, heavily pregnant Monique encounters this potential father of her exponentially growing baby on an Olympus, Inc., staircase Thursday, October 16. He hasn’t seen her since she learned she was expecting. Though Monique rates his paternity only as “possible,” Hermes accuses her of getting pregnant as a ploy make him marry her, which she scoffs. She pushes past him, burdened with the possibility that, per Apollo, the baby’s father is a supernatural being. How will she cope if she really does give birth to a monster?
Hera in sympathy with her eternal (until now) foe Aphrodite? David blocking himself from rekindling romance with Cleo? Monique soon to croon macabre lullabies to a monster?
If these questions are keeping you up at night, try this:
https://www.susandmatley.com/beyond-big-g-city/
